Milo’s eyes go wide as his head whips around to me. “Holy fuck, I just said that out loud.”
“Umm … yeah?” I ask as he frantically starts looking around at the students passing by, but while they’re all looking this way, none of them are paying any attention to him, they’re all enthralled by their shiny new toy.
“Fuck. You don’t think anyone heard?” he questions, his voice low. “I’m not exactly out of the closet here.”
“Bullshit,” I laugh. “My gaydar pointed you out from a mile away. How could you still be in the closet?”
His eyes swivel away. “It’s complicated,” he says, his voice taking on a strange, hurt tone. “Around here, being gay isn’t accepted. We’re born to be upstanding citizens of the community and then one day take over our father’s businesses, marry and have children who will then do the same. I go against the grain and not to mention, this is an all-boys school. If even a whisper of my sexual orientation was to get out, I’d have the shit beat out of me every fucking day.”
My mouth drops. “Are you kidding? In this day and age?”
“Yup. These guys are old money. They’re set in their ways. They don’t listen to what the rest of the world is telling them. All that matters is pleasing their grandaddies and hoping they don’t fuck anything up before they’re given access to their trust funds.”
“You speak as though you’re not one of those trust fund babies.”
“Oh, I am,” Milo says, a grin spreading wide over his face. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I shake my head but for some reason, I can’t help laughing. There’s something about this guy that I like. I don’t know what it is, but I feel as though I can trust him. He's still one of them but he knows a little something about being different in a man’s world and for that, he has my respect.
“Are you ready for this?” he questions after we’ve completed the whole loop of the school.
“Ready for what?”
“The last thing on your tour is finding your locker and this is where everyone is going to be. You thought those hallways were bad, just wait until you walk in here.”
My eyes bug out of my head as he starts turning the corner. “Really?”
Milo nods as we take one final step, putting us at the head of the corridor swarming with man-boys. “Welcome to hell.”
Within seconds, the corridor goes silent as hundreds of pairs of eyes turn my way. “Oh, shit,” I mutter under my breath.
“Yup. Let’s go. The longer you stand here looking like a deer in headlights, the weaker they think you are.”
Fuck.
I force my feet to move beneath me, feeling like I'm not just walking into the lion’s den, but as though I'm strutting right into it and pissing all over the lion’s territory. My eyes bounce around and I do my best to appear as though I have my shit together, but the fear begins to rattle me.
I shouldn’t be here. I should be chilling with the chicks, getting bleach thrown over me, and listening to girls claim I’m a slut for living in the Carrington mansion. Chicks are predictable, but dudes … nope. I’ve spent years trying to work out Nic, Eli, Sebastian, and Kairo, but still to this day, they’re a mystery and now I have a school full of mysteries staring back at me.
I hear their comments as I pass.
“Fresh meat.”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“Dibs.”
Milo steps in closer to my side, his tall frame brushing up against mine. “Ignore them,” he murmurs, glancing down at my papers in his hand and nodding off to the left of the corridor. “Here. Locker 367.”
Milo and I step into my locker and he scans the paper once again for the code. “I give it about three seconds before the rumors start,” he tells me. “Prepare yourself.”
I hardly have a second to respond before a heavy shoulder slams into the locker beside me. “So, you’re the famous Jade I keep hearing about.”
I groan knowing this guy could have only heard that name from one place. I turn to face the guy as Milo grunts behind me. “You’ve got the wrong chick, Spencer. This is Ocean. She’s starting today. Don’t be a douche.”
Ahh … so this is Spencer. The moronic fourth friend who had disappeared while Charlie was trying to get in my pants. I can only imagine the kinds of things Colton